Woah. I didn't think -- The last communication from the No Man's Sky people before they vanished for a couple of months was that they were working on 'base building and capital ship ownership'. Since those were two things that they'd specifically ridiculed before release, I'd kind of assumed they were being sarcastic.

Yesterday they (FINALLY) released a new patch, with... base building and capital ship ownership.

Also, they added a survival mode, which makes it more of a game by drastically increasing the inconvenience of recharging stuff and the rate at which you use up life support.

What this all leads to is that, at least in the early game, survival considerations are dangerous instead of being a nuisance. You really, really don't want to land your ship anywhere but at an outpost without a good reason, because you might not be able to take off again, and the planet might be super-hostile and difficult to explore.

So... yeah. Definately makes it worth playing again, because it's an entirely new experience. Not sure if it gives the whole game more longevity in the long run, though, since once you have all the stuff I expect it'll still be pretty easy to survive.

There's a third 'creative' mode where they supposedly took out the resource requirements for everything so you can just build whatever you want without limits. Haven't tried that one yet.

So, I voted... That part was easy, although I always feel like I voted wrong on all the initiatives.

Then I went to buy a new car. I almost succeeded! I got a 'new' car with 5000 miles on it and I knew about the mileage because they gave me a discount for that, but the last time a dealer did that it still counted as new for the warrantee and this time, no. Grr.

At least they didn't try to sell me a bottle of turtle wax for $300. 9.9

Anyway, I made the wonderful decision to go buy a car on the way to getting comics and lunch. Buying a car takes a LONG TIME. I ended up eating lunch at around 6pm. I think that means I can blame some of the really stupid things I did on low blood sugar? That's a thing, right?

And I'm not talking about accidentally buying a used car -- I'm talking about almost getting into three accidents because I decided to go for a turn without as much leeway as I usually insist on and then also being kind of slow and hesitant about it because I was in a new car that put me slightly higher off the ground than I'm used to (I think?). Fortunately, I actually did have (just) enough time to make the turn all three times, but ugh. x.x

UGH.

(in case anyone cares, I got a 2016 Subaru Imprezza that is specifically not a hybrid of any sort since I'm still kind of angry about the IMA system being counted as part of the emissions system and making my last car legally undrivable)

No Man's Sky I originally had this on my wishlist planning to buy it when it went on sale, but as the actual release date came up I found myself actually wanting to play it, so I got it, like, three days early because I'd heard the release date was the 9th and didn't realize that was for the PS4 only.

Aimless exploration seems to be the main activity, of course. Every planet has scattered monoliths that teach you alien language and outposts with random events (usually, multiple-choice quizzes in an alien language that give you a blueprint for something if you get it right), and then lots and lots of wilderness. Scattered treasure hordes. Giant mineral outcroppings. Alien life forms that are usually peaceful but there was this one planet (I named it 'FakeLake' because it had these blue patches of dirt that I thought was open water from orbit) where all the animals wanted to eat you and it was SO ANNOYING because they'd dodge and were hard to hit and then the sentinels would come in to protect the poor, precious flesh-eating monstrosities and...

...I probably should have just left that planet right away, honestly.

So, yeah. The different planets seem different -- some have water, some have caves, some have cliffs everywhere, some have flesh-eating monstrosities, most of them are toxic or radioactive or boiling hot...

But they're so big! And there's no way to get a hint as to how to get back to somewhere that you left behind. If you launch from a planet and fly around in space for a while and then go back to the planet, the odds of finding that outpost with the shop that lets you sell your loot are... not good. I wasn't able to do it, anyway.

So, yeah. It's fun, as long as you like aimless wandering and looting tiny 'dungeons' and mining. And occasionally running away from flesh-eating monstrosities.

DEATH LAZORS Last weekend there was the season premiere of My Little Pony, and I've put off giving my opinion on it for long enough that if I don't do it now it'll start stacking up with this week's episode and it'll never get done. Which is... probably not anything anyone would care about but I'm writing this anyway, damn it.

Another story about Lyra... So, I put another fanfic up on fimfiction. I like... parts of it? But I did finally finish it and I'm at the point where I would rather be done with writing it so that I can move on to something else than keep trying to figure out how to make it better.

Games part 3: Strategizifyicating I reinstalled Civ 5 because we wanted to try playing it multiplayer (co-op) again, and while I was doing that I installed a bunch of pony mods and started a game where I'm Princess Celestia competing with the neighboring empires of Chrysalis, Discord, and Sombra. Chrysalis is my BEST BUD. And as long as she has that ridiculous freaky huge army that she somehow managed to spam, I hope she stays that way.

I'm... not winning. On Prince, which I know Rowyn at least considers 'easy mode'.

I started playing it as a break from XCOM-2. I don't hate X-COM 2. I want to play it more. I'm just not sure I want to play more of it RIGHT NOW since RIGHT NOW I have to go into a retaliation mission where they're throwing mutons and a sectoid against me. The joke about the Ranger class is that 'after years of using plasma weapons, X-Com finally invented the sword'. Well, the aliens invented the sword too. Or at least the power-fist.

...and the tongue. *shudder*

Anyway, yeah -- it's a mission where you have to kill some enemies and save 6 out of 13 civilians. So far, I have not managed to finish the mission with any of my soldiers alive. X-Com 2 is FREAKING HARD.

I'm sure there are people out there complaining that it's so easy and the AI is horrible and even the 'impossible' mode is a cakewalk... because between Civ and X-COM, one thing is becoming increasingly clear.

Games... part 2: Fallout The next game I don't know why I enjoy is Fallout 4. The plot is... there. The gameplay is... there. The world is... there. The character customization exists. Somehow, though, it's really compelling, to the point where I've played through it twice and I'm in the middle of a third run. The third run being a 'no, I really do hate myself' run where I'm not using fast travel and playing on the hardest difficulty.

Playing Elite prepared me nicely for not using fast travel.

I think what happened is that they filled the world with junk to scavenge, just like lots of other games, and then had all the junk be *actually useful* for making stuff. So it's scratching the same exploration and hoarding itch as something like Terraria. But is also a decent RPG in addition.

They also have some mostly optional mazelike skyscraper or underground bunker areas that are more of a metroidvania feel, occasionally with some bonus treasure at the end.

I'll give it 3/3 even if the ending wasn't exactly what I would have wanted. The solution was logical in broad stokes, and it was only some of the details that fell flat. Meanwhile, the rest of the episode was an excuse to wow us with stuff, and it did.

The moral of the story is that people shouldn't rely on not being told spoilers, because it's really painful for everyone who knows and it doesn't matter that much anyway. Or possibly the opposite, but I'm going with my gut.

But it was a fun episode, without anything to really drag it down. I'm going to provisionally give it 3/3 although I'm worried that might just be an overreaction to the last couple episodes being terrible.

Overheard in the lunch line "What the hell? Did you bring everyone?""I didn't know this was supposed to be exclusive. What are you, some sort of ice cream hipster?""I liked ice cream before it was cool.""So when it was just cream."

[Flip Table Now] My table is full of heavy books and game boxes. It's surrounded by piles of comic books, and table itself is really fragile, both because of general shoddy construction and because one of the key supports was missing when I bought it so it's always been kind of wobbly.

So I didn't flip the table after today's MLP episode. That's really the only reason.

So, this episode gets 1/3 from the pain of having to watch it, with an additional 2 point penalty for the things it defined without really needing to and did a terrible job at. -1/3.

I also realize I didn't talk about the episode from last week. This is sort of because I don't want to talk about it. I was cringing through the entire episode, almost literally. Everything about the episode made me cringe. 1/3 for ( spoilorCollapse ). Of course, compared to this week's travesty, it was a masterpiece.